


The life and death of "Yoshida Shouyou"

by emily_420



Category: Gintama
Genre: Character Study, Gen, big manga spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 21:44:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4538490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emily_420/pseuds/emily_420
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no journey without an end; if you fly you must then land (even if you crash).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The life and death of "Yoshida Shouyou"

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking over the Shouyou-->Utsuro thing lately and this is basically my interpretation of it.

“Yoshida Shouyou” was born in flight and rebellion. Bone-weary, your soul wept for every crime they made you commit, cried out at injustice and inhumanity disguised as the rightful work of the heavens. You felt no connection to those who controlled you – if they were of the heavens, then surely you were from hell, a demon.

You shed your uniform and you shed the name they assigned you. Picking a new one wasn’t hard – it came so naturally you felt it was always part of you, part of that secret self you were forced from fear of punishment to hide away. Yoshida Shouyou. It sounded pleasant and traditional and you repeated it in your head, rolled the syllables around over your tongue, wove them into the fabric of your being. There’s none of the hard, cruel darkness of “Utsuro” – but then you weren’t sure that “Utsuro” was a real person, weren’t sure if he ever was.

Fleeing, you came across a battlefield, a setting as familiar to you as your own sword. You heard of a child, the one they call the corpse-eating demon, and that description is so reminiscent of your old, untrue self, of “Utsuro”, that you go to see him. He’s a child, that much you knew already, but his smallness, his youth, became starkly apparent as he drew his rusty sword. A young child, forced to kill with no family or warmth to speak of. Your sense of kinship grew and you picked him up, took him with you. Maybe two demons can give each other family, give each other warmth, you thought, and you gave the boy a name. A fairly plain name – Sakata Gintoki, no unusual characters, no unusual readings. He thought you were teasing him about his hair and you smiled and ruffled his curls affectionately, like a father.

Starting a school, you thought, this isn’t atonement. Nothing would be able to make up for all the lives lost, all the blood spilled, all the people you sacrificed for your own safety. It wasn’t atonement, but you wanted to do some good in the world, wanted to even out your cruel and charitable deeds if only a little. Starting a school, you felt – just as you felt when you began to run, but stronger – a sense of hope. A sense that you could be happy, there, with those kids – a sense that the world wasn’t as rotten as you had previously known. Your days became longer and fuller, light streaming into every corner of life, and your smile was genuine and your sleep was sound. Teaching those kids, your wore out your body but not your soul, and you felt, at last, at peace. You felt, at last, that you had a place you belonged.

The Naraku, of course, weren’t going to let you fly freely.

Why would they, you thought, after all, I’m but a messenger of the heavens, a crow with clipped wings and a single place to return to. You had grown your own wings, though, you thought, wings that were wide and strong and free.

They put you in a cell, and you sat with your hands tied and you smiled in what you knew would be your last days as Yoshida Shouyou. A girl came, curious and innocent even as she’s being taught how to kill efficiently, and you thought, no one is born a murderer. And in your last days as your true self, as you sat cold and uncomfortable in the dark, you taught this girl what you could. “Yoshida Shouyou” himself was an act of rebellion – you would go against them until the end, like the traitor they knew you to be.

One day – you couldn’t be sure what time it was, for there were no windows and you rarely slept – Oboro came to you, gave you a meal tray and told you it was your last meal. Your hands were still tied; you did not touch the food, did not humiliate yourself, and smiled at him wordlessly. You could see that he understood the extent of your disloyalty and you could see that he loathed you for it. You smiled wider and he left, clanging his staff against the bars of your cage.

The girl visited in that small window of time you – “Yoshida Shouyou” – had left, and you gave her what kind words you had left in you. You didn’t let her know what would, was about to happen to you – that too was a final kindness that you gifted while you were still you.

They took you to a different room, then; it was cold and square and featureless. The door shut with a heavy thud, and in the dim lamplight they plucked out your white dove’s wings that let you soar and implanted ones pure black like an oil spill. And again you became cruel and controlled and corvid; and again you became “Utsuro”.

**Author's Note:**

> @sorachi hire me


End file.
